The Arrowverse's Best & Worst Unmaskings

11. Arrow’s Vigilante

Early during Arrow Season 5, the team got to wondering about ol’ “Ski Goggles” here, seeing as he was mucking things up by intervening in takedowns. The season got so Prometheus-heavy, though, that Vigilante faded into the background, not to be revisited until….

Vigilante Unmasked!

…almost a year to the day that he was first spotted prowling Star City, when an encounter with Dinah’s sonic cry nearly blasted his trademark goggles clear off. Nonetheless bested, Vigilante slipped off his mask to reveal himself as… Vince Sobel aka Dinah’s old CCPD partner (and, ahem, partner), who was believed dead years ago but actually survived due to his own acquired meta powers.

After keeping us in the dark for a calendar year, leading to theories that ranged from “almost cool” to “mildly interesting,” going with a character we’d never even met, but only glimpsed in a flashback, left the audience to collectively shrug.

10. The Flash‘s Alchemy

At first, it appeared that this beaked Season 3 baddie was only out to right Flashpoint wrongs, by nudging undone metas into realizing their super-powered destinies. But then it became clear that he was an acolyte of the speed god Savitar’s. Wondering who was beneath the mask, many a well-trained Flash fan of course suspected….

Alchemy Unmasked!

… correctly, that it was the latest newcomer to be welcomed into the Team Flash fold — CSI Julian Albert. But in a welcome twist on the series’ tried-and-true formula, we learned that Julian was not acting evil on his own volition, but was merely an unwitting avatar for Savitar, someone to help prepare our world for the speed god’s arrival.

9. Legends of Tomorrow‘s Chronos

Frankly, we didn’t even think to wonder who was behind the mask of the Time Masters’ unstoppable stooge. That perhaps was by design, since….

Chronos Unmasked!

…it gave his unmasking a greater surprise element, and lower (if any) expectations to be met.

We’d rank this otherwise negligible reveal lower, except that it did make assumed-dead meathead Mick Rory a greater, smarter force to be reckoned with in the episodes that followed. Plus, no one likes a “traitor.”

8. The Flash‘s Man in the Iron Mask

This was a case of super-intriguing set-up leading to a payoff that was… not commensurate. In Zoom’s Earth-Two lair, we learned that the speed demon was holding prisoner this person, clad and rendered mute by an iron mask. (WTF?) We’d get teases of the prisoner’s importance, while Barry would glean that the guy knew the POW tap code. Once Team Flash was able to infilitrate Zoom’s lair and whisk away Iron Mask, we learned that it was….

Iron Mask Unmasked!

…Jay Garrick, as in — and stick with us here — the The Flash from Earth-Three, whose identity was stolen by… well, we’ll get to him in the next click….

7. The Flash‘s Zoom

Just as The Flash tangled with a sinister speedster (Reverse-Flash) in Season 1, Season 2 found him dogged by this ruthless speed demon. Zoom gets points for an impressively intimidating outfit, especially that mask with the “webbed” mouth. His unmasking, alas….

Zoom Unmasked!

…led to one of the biggest brain-scramblers in the series’ short history.

We don’t have nearly enough room to properly recap the storyline here, but in a nutshell it involved Earth-Two’s Hunter Zolomon (played by Teddy Sears), a serial killer who imprisoned Jay Garrick and then stole his Flash/Crimson Comet mantle. Thing is, Hunter was dying from the side effects of a speedster serum, and the only cure for it was no, not more cowbell, but to steal Barry Allen’s ever-amassing speed.

6. The Arrowverse’s Prometheus-X

Introduced during the wedding-crashing melee that set this season’s “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover in motion, the Nazi version of Green Arrow’s Season 5 nemesis was not the doppelganger of dead Adrian Chase, but….

Prometheus-X Revealed!

Adding salt to the double take-triggering wound, Tommy-X said all of the things that Oliver would want to hear from his dearly-departed BFF’s doppelganger… only to then reveal he was just effing with us, playing to the sappy weaknesses of his fuhrer’s Earth-One counterpart. Tommy-X then ended his life with a cyanide pill, dying in Oliver’s arms all over “again.”

5. The Flash‘s Savitar

Rivaling only Zoom as the most ominously designed adversary, this hulking “speed god” existed largely to taunt Barry with a near-future in which Iris is brutally killed, run through with one of the Big Bad’s talons. Fan theories on his identity included new Team Flash member Julian Albert, H.R. (aka the latest) Wells and…

Savitar Unmasked!

…Barry himself! But not our Barry per se. Rather, Savitar was a time remnant created to help avert Iris’ murder — meaning, he was born of a causal time loop. Shunned after playing his role in that big save, the time remnant chose to lick his emotional wounds by becoming a speed god and trying to kill The Flash. Instead, he landed in a speed force prison, where over time he grew even more insane. After duping Wally West into taking his place, Savitar resumed his vendetta against Barry and aimed to kill Iris, thus ensuring his existence… yada yada.

Also, did we mention how cool the first reveal was, as Time Remnant Barry climbed out of the huge Savitar chassis?

4. Arrow‘s Black Canary

We weren’t left to wonder for very long about the badass beauty who showed up in Season 2 to help rid Starling City of some deplorable dudes. Still…

Black Canary Unmasked!

… Oliver’s reaction to finding presumed-dead dalliance Sara Lance under that wig/mask is a keeper. (Cue quick flashback to the ill-fated Queen’s Gambit!) Even Sara knew that Ollie would need to let it “sink in for a minute,” so she promptly escaped his grasp using a flash grenade distraction.

3. Arrow‘s Dark Archer

Oliver Queen had barely settled in as Starling City’s “The Hood” when a bow-toting nemesis surfaced, determined to derail the vigilante’s assault on Robert Queen’s “list” of ne’er-do-wells. In the first of a two-part reveal…

Dark Archer Unmasked (Part 1)!

…the aforementioned Dark Archer, after nearly getting his ass handed to him by The Hood, stumbled back to his lair, whipped off his cowl and revealed to us that he was… Malcolm Merlyn, father of Oliver’s best friend Tommy.

Dark Archer Unmasked (Part 2)!

In Season 1’s penultimate episode, the Dark Archer boastfully revealed himself to The Hood, after catching one of the vigilante’s arrows mid-air. A fight ensued, at the end of which Malcolm removed his opponent’s hood to find an unconscious Oliver Queen.

The adversaries would have it out one final time (for that season, at least) in an epic rooftop skirmish, where Oliver bested his foe by running an arrow through his own shoulder — and into Malcolm’s cold, dark, tiny heart.

2. Arrow‘s Prometheus

Outfitted like an angrier version of the Dark Archer, Season 5’s Big Bad was very much Green Arrow’s physical equal, leading to multiple, brutal, knock-down, drag-out clashes. And somewhat tantalizingly, he brandished a nifty “flip” move that Oliver recognized as coming from the arsenal of one Talia al Ghul.

Prometheus Unmasked!

The smart money was on ADA Adrian Chase being revealed as Season 5’s costumed Vigilante, as it is in the comic books. But Arrow zagged, instead putting Chase inside the evil archer’s hood. The son of one of Oliver’s early “list” targets, Chase wanted venegance in the form of not killing his adversary but making him wish he were dead, by destroying his life piece by piece. And boy, did he!

1. The Flash‘s Reverse-Flash

The series’ seminal sinister speedster, “The Man in the Yellow Suit” was first and foremost the person responsible for killing Barry’s mother Nora years ago in his childhood home. Our first bombshell about the costume’s inhabitant came at the close of Season 1’s winter finale, where…

Reverse-Flash (Literally) Unmasked!

… we saw Harrison Wells access a secret closet within S.T.A.R. Labs’ time vault, inside of which was hidden the yellow suit! “Merry Christmas,” Wells said in Reverse-Flash’s haunting voice, as he attached to the suit’s chest the tachyon device.

And yet, despite all appearances, Harrison Wells was not the Big Bad. Rather, to be more specific….

Reverse-Flash (Truly) Unmasked!

… it would be revealed near the season’s end, to a captured Eddie Thawne, that the man wearing Wells’ face was actually Eobard Thawne, a descendant from the 22nd century.

Long, timey-wimey story short: Eobard longed to be The Flash, but realized he was fated to be nothing but a nemesis. Still, he had to ensure that Barry Allen became The Flash, so after murdering Nora and getting stuck in 2010, he arranged for the real Wells’ death and then swapped faces using a transmogrifier.

It was a lot to take in, but well-illustrated as it was by flashbacks (in which Matt Letscher played the true Eobard), it was, all told, a fascinating and sound payoff.